An absent-minded professor's blog.

W.B. Yeats’ Battle Cry, Applicable to Murphy’s Law

Our exhibit opens tomorrow and it seems like everything is crashing all over the place. I am almost tempted to figure out if I made the right decision of bravely doing art instead of sticking to the structured comforts of design. In this dire hour, I turn to W.B. Yeats’ The Second Coming (1921).

Turning and turning in the widening gyreThe falcon cannot hear the falconer;Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhereThe ceremony of innocence is drowned;The best lack all conviction, while the worstAre full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;Surely the Second Coming is at hand.The Second Coming! Hardly are those words outWhen a vast image out of Spiritus MundiTroubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desertA shape with lion body and the head of a man,A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,Is moving its slow thighs, while all about itReel shadows of the indignant desert birds.The darkness drops again; but now I knowThat twenty centuries of stony sleepWere vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

I hope people find inspiration from this great poet. I can’t be emo over things I can’t control, because then I’d be such a cliché. I can only allow myself one emo artist moment and then I have to act. Even if my body feels like it’s close to breaking from lack of sleep and physical overexertion. (Because I’m both left and right brained and it’s not in my nature to let my feelings get in the way of work and my new-found self discovery, deadma na to muscle pains.) Heck, I just told Murphy’s Law to “BITE ME. I will never lose to you.”

So thank you, Yeats. And like the title of my one of my artworks (“Transcendence”), I am choosing to rise above Murphy’s challenges. Emo artist be damned. I’m calling in the scientist.

About The Author

Doc B is a crazy cat lady, a former behavioral scientist turned video game producer, and a full professor. She is an INFJ who is married to an INTJ software engineer. You can grab a copy of her book by clicking the book thumbnail below.